有了賺錢的動力，就能擊敗埃博拉
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今年5月3日，新聞報道稱剛果民主共和國西部邊境上的赤道省（équateur）Ikoko-Impenge村有20多人染上了奇怪而可怕的疾病，該省衛(wèi)生部門官員也獲知了這個消息。5月8日，剛果衛(wèi)生部證實了許多人擔心的事，那就是埃博拉又卷土重來了。 不過，這次的情況和此前橫掃中非和西非的多次埃博拉疫情有所不同。它在7月中旬就結束了，而且只有33人喪生，傳播范圍也沒有顯著超越最初的感染區(qū)。相反，2014-2016年在塞拉利昂、利比里亞和幾內亞肆虐的埃博拉疫情則奪去了逾1.1萬人的生命。 與以往相比，應對這次疫情也有很多不同之處。當?shù)匦l(wèi)生部門官員和世界衛(wèi)生組織都閃電般地采取了應對措施。此外，實驗性疫苗的使用成為了這次控制疫情擴散的新手段。 該疫苗由默沙東參與開發(fā)，在今年的《財富》“改變世界”公司榜單上默沙東排名第二。這種疫苗通過構建保護性免疫鏈來控制埃博拉病毒——衛(wèi)生工作者給幾乎所有可能接觸了病毒感染者的人都接種了疫苗。雖然下定論還為時尚早（而且隨后又爆發(fā)了新疫情），但埃博拉是100年來最讓人恐懼的疾病之一，而新的疫苗和免疫策略或許真的能成為抗擊這種疾病的轉折點，甚至有可能讓我們找到對付其他病毒性流行病的頭緒。 默沙東為埃博拉疫苗投入了大量資金，并曾在此前的重大疫情中進行過測試。該公司埃博拉研究部門負責人貝絲-安·科勒說，埃博拉減毒活疫苗由不同病毒組分的DNA組合而成，每一瓶疫苗的生產(chǎn)都極為復雜，需要耗時整整一年。但這家大型制藥企業(yè)開展這項工作并不是為了做慈善。相反，默沙東的疫苗業(yè)務去年的銷售額超過60億美元，其產(chǎn)品還包括肺炎疫苗、帶狀皰疹疫苗和針對能引發(fā)癌癥的人乳頭瘤病毒的疫苗產(chǎn)品。盡管埃博拉疫苗本身沒帶來高額利潤，但通過開發(fā)該產(chǎn)品獲得的知識應該可以應用到整個疫苗業(yè)務的研發(fā)活動中。 簡而言之，默沙東所做的和許多大公司一樣，那就是嘗試解決需要解決的問題，并設法在這個過程中獲得利潤。實際上，全世界的公司每天都在想辦法同時做到這兩點——它們相信“利成于益”，而且通常很低調。 我們這些在《財富》雜志工作的人覺得這是一個值得探討的現(xiàn)象。因此，在來自Shared Value Initiative合作伙伴的幫助下，我們連續(xù)第四年鎖定了幾十家在日常運營中解決公共健康、環(huán)境、經(jīng)濟或其他社會問題的公司。要說明的是，這份榜單和公司的慈善活動無關，而且我們也沒有用什么全方位的善惡標準來衡量企業(yè)（就算想要這樣，我們也評估不出來）。相反，《財富》雜志的“改變世界”公司榜的立足點是完全通過可持續(xù)、可擴張的問題解決機制來解決問題，我們稱這種機制為“生意”。 2015年首次開展這項工作時，我們覺得很難找到50家符合標準的公司。而今年我們則有如此之多的合格候選企業(yè)，以至于我們將上榜大公司（年銷售額至少達到10億美元）的數(shù)量擴大到了57家，而且還納入了6家呈冉冉升起的“明星企業(yè)”。 其中一家“明星企業(yè)”以令人意外的方式為應對最新一輪埃博拉疫情做出了貢獻，它就是中國冰箱企業(yè)澳柯瑪。默沙東的埃博拉疫苗面臨的一大挑戰(zhàn)是它的儲藏溫度非常低（零下60攝氏度或以下）。在撒哈拉以南的非洲偏遠地區(qū), 因為很多地方都沒有通電，所以這幾乎是無法完成的任務——直到基金公司Global Good的一批投資人發(fā)明了便攜式深度冷凍冰箱Arktek，它可以在任何地方儲備幾百瓶疫苗。而它的生產(chǎn)企業(yè)就是澳柯瑪。（財富中文網(wǎng)) 本文最初刊登在2018年9月1日出版的《財富》雜志上。 譯者：Charlie 審校：夏林 ? |
ON MAY 3, REPORTS that a strange and frightening illness had struck more than 20 people in the village of Ikoko-Impenge reached health officials in the province of équateur, on the western border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. By May 8, the Ministry of Health confirmed what many had feared: Ebola was back. But this outbreak ran a different course than many of the previous ones across Central and West Africa. By mid-July it was over. Instead of more than 11,000 deaths—the grisly toll of the 2014–2016 epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea—this one killed 33 and never spread far beyond its immediate zone of infection. There was much that was different this time around. Both local health officials and the World Health Organization had responded with lightning speed. And now there was something else to contain the spread: an experimental vaccine. The vaccine, codeveloped by Merck, No. 2 on this year’s Change the World list, kept Ebola in check through a protective ring of immunization, with health workers vaccinating virtually everyone who may have been in contact with a person infected with the virus. And while it’s still too early to tell (and another outbreak has since begun), the new vaccine and immunization strategy may well be a turning point in the battle against one of the scariest diseases of the past century—and perhaps even give us clues to staving off other viral epidemics. Merck’s investment in the Ebola vaccine has been prodigious. The company tested it in the crucible of past outbreaks. And the production of each vial of this live attenuated vaccine, combined from the DNA of different viral components, is so complex that it takes a full year to complete, says Beth-Ann Coller, who heads up Merck’s Ebola research efforts. But the drug giant isn’t doing this out of charity. Rather, the company’s vaccine business—which includes inoculations against pneumonia, shingles, and the cancer-causing HPV—had more than $6 billion in sales last year. Even if the Ebola vaccine doesn’t make gobs of money on its own, the knowledge gained from developing it should help inform R&D across the business. Merck, in short, is doing what so many great companies do: trying to fix something that needs fixing and trying to turn a profit while doing it. Indeed, businesses around the globe manage to accomplish both of these things—they do well by doing good—every day, and often away from the headlines. We at Fortune think that’s a phenomenon worth exploring. So for the fourth straight year, with the help of our partners at the Shared Value Initiative, we’ve identified dozens of companies that are tackling public health, environmental, economic, or other societal challenges as part of their everyday operations. The list, importantly, isn’t about the charity companies give—and, no, we’re not weighing corporations on some omniscient scale of good and bad. (We couldn’t make that assessment if we tried.) Fortune’s Change the World list, rather, is about solving problems through the only sustainable and scalable problem solving machine we know of: business. Back in 2015, when we started this effort, we thought we’d have a hard time finding 50 companies that fit the bill. This year we had so many worthy candidates that we stretched the number of big-company honorees, those with at least $1 billion in annual sales, to 57 and included six rising stars as well. One of those rising stars has also helped, in a surprising way, to fight the latest Ebola outbreak—that’s Chinese refrigeration company Aucma. One major challenge of Merck’s Ebola vaccine is that it needs to be stored in ultralow temperatures (–60 degrees Celsius or less). The feat was nearly impossible to manage in remote parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where there’s often no power grid to speak of—until, that is, a group of inventors at Global Good created a portable deep-freeze container called the Arktek, capable of storing hundreds of vials of vaccine anywhere. So how does Aucma fit into this story? It manufactures the Arktek. This article originally appeared in the September 1, 2018 issue of Fortune. |
